Sarays visit, Artemisia annua and other things

Yes, Saray is around again! If you have followed my blog, you'll know
that she was here last year with a friend, and this year she found an
excuse to come back. Saray is studying herbal medicine in Edinburgh,
and she has decided to do her dissertation about Artemisia Annua, a
plant known in china for more than 2000 years that so far is the best
malaria treatment known.

Artemisia annua produces artemisinin, which is the base for the famous
artemisinin combination therapies (ACT) used to treat malaria.
Unfortunately ACTs are too expensive or not available for most of the
people that suffers malaria. Trying to tackle this problem, there is
an organisation called ANAMED (Action for natural medicine) that has
developed a hybrid of Artemisia Annua that can be cultivated in
Africa. They run seminars and trainings where they teach how to use
herbal medicines, and also how to grow Artemisia Annua and prepare it
as a tea to treat malaria.

We have spent the week end visiting several places, clinics and
teaching centers where they have started to grow the plant and use it!
And we both came back very impressed about the possibilities of the
project. Probably there is a lot of work to do to ensure good practice
when using the plant, but I really thing that Artemisia annua and
natural medicine could be the solution of many of the health problems
found in Africa.

Many persons have no access to the expensive drugs, but they can grow
in their gardens their own!